Chapter 4 - The Man in the Photograph
Lorenzo moved Mia to a safe apartment above a bakery owned by an old family friend. He left two guards outside and told them that anyone approaching without his voice code was to be treated as a threat.
Mia hated the apartment.
“It smells like burnt sugar,” she complained.
“That's because it's a bakery.”
“It smells like a birthday cake that got in trouble.”
Lorenzo almost smiled. It surprised him how quickly the child filled silence. He had spent years building a house where nobody spoke unless spoken to. Mia seemed determined to undo the place one sentence at a time.
He called his attorney, Daniel Voss, and asked him to find Luca's original personnel file. Daniel went quiet when he heard the name.
“That file was destroyed,” he said.
“By whom?”
“Your signature authorized it.”
Lorenzo felt the old anger rise. “I never signed that order.”
“I have a copy with your signature.”
“Then you have a forgery.”
A pause. “Lorenzo, don't come to the office. The building isn't secure.”
The call ended.
Mia sat cross-legged on the rug, sorting sugar packets into rows. “He sounded scared.”
“He has good reason.”
“Is he a bad man?”
“I don't know yet.”
“That's a grown-up way of saying yes.”
Lorenzo looked at her. “Where did you learn to talk like that?”
“My dad. He said people tell the truth when they think kids aren't listening.”
She pulled a photograph from her pocket. It showed Luca in a hospital corridor, holding a newborn baby. On the back was a date and the words: For Mia, so she knows where she came from.
Lorenzo studied the picture. The hospital bracelet on Luca's wrist carried a number from St. Agnes Medical Center. The baby had a small crescent-shaped birthmark near her left ear.
“Is that you?”
Mia nodded. “Dad said my mom died when I was born.”
Lorenzo turned the photograph over again. “Did he ever tell you her name?”
“Anna.”
The name brought back a face: Sofia's younger sister, who had disappeared after the bombing. Lorenzo had believed Anna died overseas.
He looked at Mia's birthmark.
Then he looked at the date.
It was three months after Sofia's death.
Mia was not Luca's daughter.
May you like
She was Anna's.
And that meant the child sitting on his rug might be the last living piece of the family he had failed to protect.
